Brooks Lee Blossoms Into Top MLB Draft Prospect At Cal Poly Under Father’s Tutelage

Coaching your son at the Division I level is a difficult thing to navigate. It’s been said that the arrangement works best when the coach’s son is clearly a walk-on-type player who won’t play much. Or when the coach’s son is a superstar who no one can deny should be a centerpiece of the team.

Given that, Cal Poly coach Larry Lee is in an advantageous situation, because his son Brooks Lee is not only the best player on the Cal Poly roster—he’s also one of the best players in the country. No one is going to cry about nepotism when Brooks hits in the middle of the order and starts at shortstop, the most prominent position on the infield every day.

“If you coach your son in college, he better be really good or you know there’s a chance you get some flack from the outside world,” Larry said.

As Brooks played at San Luis Obispo (Calif.) High and on the showcase circuit, it would become clear just how talented and advanced he was, but there were earlier hints.

By seventh grade, Brooks was catching bullpens at Cal Poly. In eighth grade, when Cal Poly was short a guy or two during scrimmages, Larry would put his son in the field at second base or shortstop.

Those opportunities were a window into the competitive nature of a young Brooks Lee and illustrated his high standards.

Here he was fielding hotshot grounders and trying to turn double plays against Division I players in some cases eight years older than he was, and he was still bothered by the mistakes he made in those scrimmages.

“I still remember everything about it,” Brooks said. “I still remember all the errors I made and how fast the ball was going.”

Now, Brooks has ridden that competitive spirit—and considerable talent—to a place among the very best prospects for the 2022 draft.

He really burst onto the scene in 2021, hitting .342/.384/.626 with 27 doubles and 10 home runs. A switch-hitter, he was considered one of the best pure hitters in the 2019 high school class, and that skill set has translated into college. He has also used sure hands, good footwork and excellent feel for the game to become a quality defensive shortstop.

At the plate, Lee’s power has come on and allowed his star to shine even brighter. Ten home runs was an impressive number, but as he continues to add strength to a sturdy 6-foot-2, 205-pound frame, it’s easy to see some of those doubles finding their way over the fence.

“I ended up having a pretty good year average-wise and then also for home runs and doubles,” Brooks said. “The doubles play into our park, Baggett Stadium, because of the gaps, so a plus for me in there, but one thing I didn’t really think about going through was the power. When it started happening, I was just thankful that I had it in the tank.”

Getting to this point has come after a series of pivotal decisions and moments in Brooks’ baseball life.

The first was making the decision to stay home and play for his father. By Brooks’ own admission, he was mostly a bystander to the recruiting process early in high school as he watched his friends like Cooper Benson, a 17th-round selection of the Blue Jays this year, get early interest.

That changed over time, as it became increasingly clear that Brooks was talented enough to play anywhere. But the attention from high-profile programs didn’t drive Brooks to leave home and play elsewhere. Instead, being presented with other options only reaffirmed that what he actually wanted to do was play for his dad at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo.

“My senior year, it’s basically just like, ‘I think I’m good enough to go play anywhere else in the country, but I want to give my dad the player he made and not go somewhere else,’ ” Brooks said.

But Brooks wasn’t just good enough to play his college baseball anywhere. He was good enough that MLB organizations were interested in making him an early-round draft pick.

 

As the 2019 draft approached, Brooks was the No. 38 prospect on the BA 500 draft ranking, and there was talk that he could go at some point at the back of the first round.

The Lee family let the process play out, and Brooks participated in a handful of predraft workouts with teams with which there was mutual interest. At that point, beginning his pro career was still very much on the table.

Just days before the 2019 draft, Larry was on the road recruiting and called Brooks to let him know that they needed to have a family meeting about the situation when he returned. It was time for the family to make a decision.

Brooks remembers the meeting well.

“It was in my parents’ bedroom,” Brooks recalled. “We tried to go over what my adviser was saying at the time and just tried to put a whole new perspective on how my career could end up and what the possibilities were. I was really interested in the draft early on. I didn’t want to go to school. I’m not a big fan of school, but (if I could) take three years of school and play for my dad, I’d rather do that than sign, because I know the draft will be there whenever the time comes for an opportunity.”

Adversity hit not long after Brooks arrived at Cal Poly in the fall of 2019. Running out a ground ball in a scrimmage that October, Brooks suffered a rare hamstring injury that forced him to have surgery.

The original recovery timetable had Brooks set to return in April, but he was healthy enough for two pinch-hit appearances against Baylor in early March 2020, with the idea that he would start in the games to follow.

But those games never happened. The college season was canceled after that point because of Covid-19. Just like that, something Brooks and Larry Lee had been looking forward to for years was delayed an entire year.

But there was a silver lining. The Covid cancellation turned out to be something of a jumping-off point for where Brooks is as a player now. It allowed him to not only get fully healthy but also to train in a way that he might not have been able to otherwise.

“It sucks that Covid happened, but it was the best for me because I knew I could redevelop my body and get my leg to 100% before I started a game and then kind of work on my other tools (that) I needed to get back in shape from injury,” Brooks said.

Lee’s momentum carried into the summer. After some time in the Cape Cod League, Lee spent most of July with USA Baseball’s Collegiate National Team.

Although that group didn’t get to play its normal schedule against international competition, it still provided players with lots of opportunities against the very best players the college game has to offer in an 11-game scrimmage schedule, plus a three-game series against the team representing the U.S. in the Olympics.

After hitting .306 in the scrimmages against his teammates, Brooks shined in the final game of the series against the Olympians, going 3-for-4 and hitting a leadoff home run against Blue Jays prospect Simeon Woods Richardson.

“He understands it’s a big world out there,” Larry said of Brooks. “This summer has been beneficial for him, playing on the Cape and playing for Team USA facing elite pitching night in and night out. So all of these are just experiences that (will) help him through his journey to where he wants to go.”

If the Team USA experience is as formative as the Lee family hopes it will be, Cal Poly will have on its hands one of the most complete college players in the game in 2022 and quite likely its highest draft pick ever, a distinction currently held by catcher John Orton, who went 25th overall in 1987.

All that’s left for Lee in college is winning. A fourth-place finish in the Big West Conference last season left Brooks a little disappointed, but that just serves to fuel him heading into 2022.

“As a team, we didn’t get to where we wanted to,” Brooks said. “That’s what my main priority was, which is also another reason I went to Poly. I want us to make a regional berth or host and have a good chance of going to Omaha because I thought we were the team to do it. So I have one more year to try and get back at that.”